Was anyone really surprised that this year’s government budget was an underwhelming affair, ‘business as usual’ (with an emphasis on business), conservative in terms of expenditure on the disintegrating social fabric of our country, containing only token gestures to gloss over but not to reform inequities?
This budget and this Government were never going to address homelessness. On the one hand, Ministers are not sure if they agree that a crisis of homelessness even exists. On the other hand, they reject tax and other controls to address housing unaffordability and unavailability – but whip out ideologically driven, draconian, ready-made solutions such as freeing up yet more land on city fringes for development, threatening to remove council control over planning decisions, fast tracking consents, and removing residents’ rights to defend their local environments. But these moves are pre-emptory given the imminent decisions on thirty years’ residential land supply signalled in Auckland’s Proposed Unitary Plan; inappropriate, given the council’s role in land use planning, representing communities, and providing infrastructure; ill targeted given that the liberalisation of development controls will put even more pressure on the construction sector’s limited capacity to build quality houses; and inevitably ineffective, given poor peoples’ borrowing limits, and existing high house prices. As economist Shamabeel Eaqub says, government’s policies directed at generating ‘new housing, …focus on the affluent, rather than the poor’.
This budget contains some targeted education funding for the most needy children – at the expense of schools’ general operating budgets; some targeted funding for intensive case work to get young people into jobs; and support for the integration of released prisoners back into the workforce. But this government was never realistically going to take steps to improve the conditions of those most in need; to address mental and physical health problems at cause; to correct the structural causes of inequity, poverty, despair. There are no answers to those problems within the current model. Higher pay, less wage slavery, safer working conditions, more dignity in the workplace, a living wage. These things are an anathema, untenable in an economy that seeks to extract maximum value and profit, and minimise costs of labour and externalities.
Bill English’s budget speech apparently mentioned growth ten times, and inequality once. But then this is a budget that increased military and intelligence operational spending by $479 million, on top of a base budget of almost $2 billion, but only provided an extra $200 million for social housing. Yet our society is more threatened by socio-economic inequality than it is by terrorism or invasion.
The budget was never going to improve fresh water quality for its intrinsic, recreational and environmental values. Instead, the budget allocates funds for freshwater enhancement (ameliorating the worst effects of intensive dairy capitalism on behalf of the industry) but also subsidises irrigation schemes and pins future economic hopes on pollution’s source – more intensive dairy production, and more nitrates and run-off and more contaminated rivers.
Pre-budget promises of good things to come for conservation, came to nought, with a real-world reduction of the Department of Conservation’s budget, despite our country having about 800 endangered or threatened species – so many they even have their own ambassador! DoC’s on the ground work is undermined by ongoing funding cuts, this year a reduction of 14% for the Department’s core business of ‘Management of Natural Heritage’ – care of native animals and habitats. DoC’s opex is down 9% from last year, and overall funding is also 9% less than before. While $12 million has been allocated to help small communities provide toilets to support tourism, this government that sees the natural world as a commodity to be marketed and traded, not one to be protected for its natural values. Species and habitats are apparently less important than ever.
The budget has been criticised for being like a band aid on a serious injury. The indicators of inequality, homelessness, hopelessness, 146,000 people unemployed, 200,000 children in poverty, epidemic suicide levels, a precariat workforce in a heavily indebted, precarious, narrowly focused, undiversified economy, all show a seriously injured society indeed.
This budget and this government were never going to provide the structural tools and address the structural challenges of a deregulated, speculative, unequal society. Addressing the chasm of income disparity would require the removal of privileges, the redistribution of advantage. It would require revolution over reform, and this budget at best attempts to cover up or provide a symbolic salve while entrenching the pathologies arising from the model itself. This is a government that’s looking out for the political gains of less taxes, of an ideology of less government and more business. It’s a government that follows the market, not one that leads society.
They made most of the Maoris happy and are keeping them on board.
But they failed our homeless and our needy and our dirty waters and so much more. Their deception and lack of good leadership will mean many will continue to pay and suffer and our country will continue to decline.
Market and corporate priorities are obvious and this is unbalanced and not healthy. John Key was once called a — ” Corporation in disguise of a man. ”
Social services and the environment will always suffer and be under-funded when this kind of an ” out of touch ” govt. rules.
Thanks Christine again for your informative work.
It helps and is appreciated.
Thought Key was ‘The Smiling Assassin’. He certainly behaves like one now.
Here is a speech given by John Key in 2007.
John Key has given a powerful speech on NZ’s housing crisis:
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Today, I want to talk in some depth about the declining rates of home ownership in New Zealand.
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It wasn’t so long ago, in the 1990s, in fact, that New Zealand had a high level of home ownership compared to other countries. Not so anymore. We now have what has been described as the second worst housing affordability problem in the world.
Make no mistake; this problem has got worse in recent years. Home ownership declined by 5% between the 2001 and 2006 census to just 62.7%. To put that into context, home ownership for the preceding five years had been stable at 67.4%.
If you dig down into those numbers a little deeper, some worrying facts emerge. The share of homes owned by people aged 20 to 40 dropped significantly between 2001 and 2006. Young people – the people we most want to prevent joining the great Kiwi brain-drain – are really struggling to get onto the property ladder.
This decline shows no signs of slowing. In fact, on current trends, the crisis will only deepen. Home ownership rates are predicted to plummet to 60% within the next decade. And one of the biggest factors influencing home-ownership rates over the next 10 years will be the difficulty young buyers will have getting into their first home.
This problem won’t be solved by knee-jerk, quick-fix plans. And it won’t be curbed with one or two government-sponsored building developments.
Instead, we need government leadership that is prepared to focus on the fundamental issues driving the crisis.
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The … most important reason for the home affordability crisis is one of supply. It explains why houses have become so unaffordable for so many people. Quite simply, not enough new houses are being built in New Zealand. This is a recent phenomenon. In many parts of the country, increases in demand for housing are now outstripping supply.
That imbalance is vividly illustrated in Auckland. In the five years to 2006, the supply of housing stock has failed to keep up with population growth. Again to put that into context, over the 15 years to 2006 the housing stock grew at a faster rate than population. So the supply problem is a recent one. Economics 101 would tell you that if the demand for housing outstrips supply, then the only way for house prices to go is up, up, up.
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National’s goal is to turbo-charge the supply of housing in New Zealand by confronting the fundamental constraints that have kept a lid on it. By contrast, Labour’s instinctive reaction to the housing supply problem is to say the government must get in and build some houses. … I think it’s dangerous for the Government to pretend that developments such as that at Hobsonville are some sort of panacea to the housing affordability crisis.
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Central and local government should always be aware of environmental and community concerns regarding new housing developments. But if we are serious about dealing with the housing affordability crisis, if we are serious about protecting the Kiwi Dream of home ownership, then we need to get a better balance between those concerns and their eventual impact on home affordability. To not do so is to ignore a fundamental long-term driver of the housing affordability crisis.
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National’s infrastructure plan will go hand in hand with our efforts to confront the housing affordability crisis. We will free up more land to build on while ensuring new developments are served by the infrastructure they need.
Conclusion
Over the past few years a consensus has developed in New Zealand. We are facing a severe home affordability and ownership crisis. The crisis has reached dangerous levels in recent years and looks set to get worse.
This is an issue that should concern all New Zealanders. It threatens a fundamental part of our culture, it threatens our communities and, ultimately, it threatens our economy.
The good news is that we can turn the situation around. We can deal with the fundamental issues driving the home affordability crisis. Not just with rinky-dink schemes, but with sound long-term solutions to an issue that has long-term implications for New Zealand’s economy and society.
National has a plan for doing this and we will be resolute in our commitment to the goal of ensuring more young Kiwis can aspire to buy their own home.
It’s a worthy goal and one I hope you will support us in achieving. Thank-you.
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NOW AGAIN : contrast whats happening now with that speech – AND AGAIN : read this from the same era and ask yourselves if anything has really changed ….
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/10468960/Aroha-of-McGehan-Close-flees-NZ
This govt is nothing more than yet another glorified business board. Only looking at maximum profit extraction . They are not a govt. Governments do not act this way. Governments take into consideration their decisions and the impact of those decisions on society.
Ask yourself : do we really need yet another business board or do we need a govt?
Under Key’s “Brighter Future” the so-called “Kiwi Dream” is one only the better off can realise and benefit from. For the rest of us mortals it is simply a dream that will never come true, or that will end in a nightmare.
Well done Christine the Budgwet was just a ” band aid on a serious injury.”
WILD KATIPO showed the PM as lying toad that should be investigated by a Royal Commission no less for his “on the inside trading” habit we employs all the time as PM of this country.
How can this charlatan continue as PM while he acts as a simple crook using his PM as a financial gain from it????
What a hell hole Key has put us under.
Its worse than a band aid. It should be called the BS budget.
Page 73 of the budget fiscal and economic update there’s a footnote that pretty much says 11 billion in defence spending makes our budget estimates look shit so we will put it in later.
A very good title, followed by many excellent points, Christine.
‘Yet our society is more threatened by socio-economic inequality than it is by terrorism or invasion.’
And planetary meltdown via CO2 emissions poses a far greater threat to our society than anything else:
Daily CO2
May 26, 2016: 407.84 ppm
May 26, 2015: 403.01 ppm
However, planetary meltdown probably won’t fully manifest for another year or two:
https://ads.nipr.ac.jp/vishop/vishop-extent.html
so that did not even get mentioned by Bill.
In fact, it is abundantly clear that the NZ government plans to contribute inordinately to even faster planetary meltdown than we are currently witnessing:
‘Bill English’s budget speech apparently mentioned growth ten times, and inequality once.’
Yes, the same old dysfunctional ideology of infinite growth on a finite planet whatever the future costs.
‘this government that sees the natural world as a commodity to be marketed and traded, not one to be protected for its natural values. Species and habitats are apparently less important than ever.’
In the suicide cult promoted by the Key government the factors that make the Earth habitable for humans have no importance.
‘A Frightening Year May be in Store’
http://guymcpherson.com/2016/05/a-frightening-year-may-be-in-store/#comment-175041
‘Last month was the hottest April in the global climate record. Not only was it the hottest such month ever recorded — it smashed the previous record by the largest margin ever recorded. And this April has now become the seventh month in a row in an unbroken chain of record global heat.’
https://robertscribbler.com/2016/05/17/the-beast-growls-warming-induced-wildfire-again-doubles-in-size-burns-tar-sands-workers-cam
Yes while our CO2 emissions climb so does the wilful poisoning of our land air & water increase as our cancer exposure also will because of this;
OPINION – Why we need rail for our community health and safety.
Road freight cost is to rise, say’s Road Transport Association’s Ken Shirley in this article on RNZ today 27/5/16.
http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/regional/305027/truck-crashes-blamed-on-fatigue-and-inexperience
Quote; “Freight may go up – Road Transport Forum
The Road Transport Forum says the cost of freight will have to rise if log truck drivers are to work shorter hours for better pay.
The forum’s chief executive Ken Shirley said that’s a result of fierce competition and a race to the bottom as transport companies undercut each other for contracts.” (Un-quote,)
Our waterways are already polluted and we have a long way to go to reduce the runoff from our roads currently with traffic pollution into our streams and rivers killing all our fish and ells.
Mr Key/Smith/English/Joyce, – you as I and all farmers know how much we need to keep our waterways cleaned up again, for us all to survive in our regions, so using rail will reduce the trucks and keep our waterways cleaner so we need rail for when the log volumes treble.
Consider; How much rubber dust is there, where does it go, and is it harmful?
Tyres are made from oil as distillates producing chemicals that cause cancer.
Just look up 1,3, Butadiene – styrene as the two principal chemicals in truck tyres and see for yourselves.
Both are carcinogenic causing substances that are in tyre dust.
Each time a tyre rotates, it loses a layer of rubber about a billionth of a metre thick. If you do some numbers, this works out to about four million million million carbon atoms lost with each rotation.
A busy road with 25,000 vehicles travelling on it each day will generate around nine kilograms of tyre dust per kilometre. In the USA, about 600,000 tonnes of tyre dust comes off vehicles every year.
In the Australian outback, traces of lead from car exhausts have been found up to 50 kilometres away from the nearest road. So some of the tyre dust can travel that far — but of course, most of it will settle around the road and enter the waterways nearby.
Protect our waterways and health of our people and our future please and choose rail.
The NZ government (like most other governments) has no interest in protecting the environment or in doing things efficiently. In fact, the present system is totally dependent on trashing the environment and doing things extremely inefficiently in order that corporations and opportunists can make a fast buck. We can therefore say the NZ government has no interest in the future of New Zealanders or even in maintaining life on Earth. Anything a minister or bureaucrat says is either a gross misrepresentation or an outright lie.
There is now a daily tally of government-initiated disasters, not least being the overwhelming of the Earth’s capacity to process CO2 emissions.
May 27, 2016: 407.99 ppm
May 27, 2015: 403.33 ppm
Up 4.66 ppm (versus 2.1 ppm over 2005 to 2014 and 0.7 ppm per annum when measuring began in the late 1950s).
As a consequence of idiotic policies foisted on the populace (both here and overseas) over many decades the point of no return has been passed and we are now at the stage of Abrupt Climate Change and accelerating environmental collapse.
Is already rather unpleasant in a lot of locations and will start to get very nasty from about 2018 on as the ‘developed’ portion of humanity destroys itself and everything else via fossil fuel addiction and consumerism.
Christine Rose is to be commended for her analysis of the current state of the real NZ that you won’t read about or watch on our MSM.
The current economy and it’s vile consequences for our entrenched underclass and others because it reaches and effects kiwis who consider themselves middle class won’t be challenged or threatened or even reformed such is its influence and power over many with money and wealth its greatest weapons.
Even a Labour govt would not tackle this system merely tinkle with it to re distribute some tax to its important constituency and fund worn down social provisions from nine years of massive pillage and underfunding at the hands of Richardson Shipley Bolger and other suspects hidden from scrutiny.
The 45% that keep the current white collar criminals in power and it’s colleagues in the media that endorse them are Keys wealthy or comfortable conservative parasites that approve and support his policies and have no time for the current economic refugees or those who try to give them a voice or attack their electable representative despite his vulgar and abhorrent behaviour.
To force real change it will take an external event or the pressure of an internal battle that has consequences for the monied classes or maybe a Bernie or Corbyn like leader who has the courage to do battle with the AL mighty dollar and change the narrative.
Good old labour – party of the poor and the working class team up with national to rush under urgency another tax rise….
The Customs and Excise (Tobacco Products—Budget Measures) Amendment Bill has passed through all its stages under urgency.
Ayes 109 (National 59, Labour 32, Greens 14, Maori Party 2, ACT 1, United Future 1)
Noes 12 (NZ First 12)
This bill amends the Customs and Excise Act 1996 to make four cumulative 10% increases to the duties on all tobacco products
***Source***
http://parliamenttoday.co.nz/2016/05/tobacco-tax-bill-passes-under-urgency/
Watch all the wowsers and sanctimonious holier-than-thou-pricks try and justify this tax grab
$78 for a pack of durries, how the hell does that help the working class man
A pox on National, a pox on labour, a pox on the greens and maori party.
Damm y’all siting up there in your ivory towers
“Bill English’s budget speech apparently mentioned growth ten times, and inequality once. But then this is a budget that increased military and intelligence operational spending by $479 million, on top of a base budget of almost $2 billion, but only provided an extra $200 million for social housing. Yet our society is more threatened by socio-economic inequality than it is by terrorism or invasion.”
This government can boast about “growth” only, because we have had significant population growth over the last three years. Without this we would not have any growth at all, or even be in a kind of recession, I bet.
They have used the most primitive economic stimulus measure one can think off, that is increasing the population through largely too laissez faire immigration policy, while failing to provide the infrastructure, housing and services to cater for the new residents and returning residents and citizens.
It is a bit like antiquated measures by rulers, telling mums to have more babies, so the economy can grow and the nation can “grow” and become stronger.
In my view this is an incompetent government that simply muddles through and acts in almost criminal negligence when managing its affairs, for which we will all pay a very high price for years to come.
There are so many great people who see through, what is one of the largest swindle this country has ever seen.
However, it seems to be taking far to long for others to see the damage Key and his lack lustre band of brothers, and a few motley sisters has done, and continues to do.
One day soon, I hope that many more will open their eyes and turn against the National Party, and especially against the likes of Dunne and that Act buffoon.
With Nationals wholesale immigration policies they are undermining the fabric of NZ society, this country was built by hard work from the early settlors and the Maori people, despite the theft of their lands, who cleared the forests, developed the farmland, built the roads and railways? Now we have the country being invaded by new immigrants whose forebears have contributed nothing to the development of this country.
“This budget contains some targeted education funding for the most needy children – at the expense of schools’ general operating budgets; some targeted funding for intensive case work to get young people into jobs; and support for the integration of released prisoners back into the workforce. But this government was never realistically going to take steps to improve the conditions of those most in need; to address mental and physical health problems at cause; to correct the structural causes of inequity, poverty, despair. There are no answers to those problems within the current model.”
Bill English and his budget show that this society does not care much for those that suffer and struggle to get the medical and social support they urgently need.
Here is a post by one other person who has suffered, does suffer and expresses her grief rather well:
http://www.writehanded.org/blog/2016/05/27/grief-loss-anger/
I wonder what this budget offers those at risk of suicide. Leaving also many others out in the cold, not even able to afford a home to live in, is criminal, in my view.
But as we hear and see, Key and English are more concerned about counting beans, talking about (immigration driven) “growth” and looking after their property owning mates taking advantage of the housing market.
And for next election further tax cuts for them and the elite will be announced, so the greedy will go out in droves to vote this lot back in.
The missing million could make a difference, but so far Labour and Greens seem to fail tapping into that potential.
Watch The Nation tomorrow morning, it shows how so many people in the poorer parts of Auckland have become transient, many do not even keep their roofs over their heads, cannot afford rents and hence move repeatedly, so that their kids do not stay at one school for a whole year. It is an eyeopener what the program showed this morning.
They have to increase the intelligence and military funding to track the home grown terrorist who will re-act to the state of this country. Take a look at France they are striking because they don’t like the bill going through their parliament that is going to change their employment law. We just sit back complain and suck it up.
We are headed for another Global financial crash more destructive than ever seen before, as we have changed our whole monetary system from real wealth to debt based “wealth, setting us up for a major disaster coming soon.
We are in the twilight zone before the total crash and one day we will see the banks unable to open and signal the end of the Breton woods “Alice in Wonderland” Enclosed world” they then created by decoupling the real wealth generated system, by tying the monetary value to the goods created for a new “currency trader” (John Key type)system, so now we have a system that solely relies of borrowed money to keep the “currency trader” financial FIAT money system going.
Disaster awaits us all folks so prepare.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZprvOrynJF8
Good post. +100
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